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Opinion: Another species of hominin may still be alive
- phreeza 5y agoThis gives off the vibe of a scientist throwing themselves off an epistemic cliff in order to sell a book.
- mjburgess 5y agoOften called "retirement".
- Apocryphon 5y agoArthur C. Clarke claimed there were forests of banyan trees on Mars: https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-12/banyan-trees-mars/ https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-...
- kuhewa 5y agoI think it's just when you retire, look back at the who enterprise of your discipline and decide life doesn't need to all be so grave, and decide it's time to have some fun with that one pet theory you heard about on field expeditions.
- phreeza 5y agoI mean it's cute if you phrase it like that but it becomes a problem when it is used as part of the narrative that established science is corrupt and hiding the truth, coupled with the profit motive getting book sales/podcast ads etc.
- kuhewa 5y agoI'm being serious, I'm sure thats what happened here. I doubt the guy is just knowingly grifting for book sales, he probably just held onto this idea as a pet theory during his career and sort of compartmentalized it from his primary academic work. edit: considering he was an interpretivist cultural anthropologist, that appears to be the case, its not like he spent a career studying hominid fossils. That said this is cryptozoology stuff is (relatively) harmless compared to the more common emeritus meteorologist/physicist that uses his credentials to explain to those primed to listen why anthropogenic climate change is bullshit
- idiotsecant 5y agoThis article doesn't really point to a single concrete reason that the title might be true. Its pure navelgazing.
- happytoexplain 5y agoDoes it need to? It's hard to expect "concrete" reasons for "might"s and "may"s. Even without them, the information is still interesting.
- InitialLastName 5y agoA) It's anthropology. There is nothing concrete available; the entire field is an attempt to learn things by investigating human societies. In this case, the allegation is that a specific tribe have enough stories about human-like but non-human creatures in their region to be taken seriously (in conjunction with the established presence of non-human hominins in that region in the fossil record) as a record of recent history. B) The article is promotion for a book, which I would hope would have a more cohesive presentation of evidence.
- prepend 5y agoIf the book had anything compelling it would already be news. It’s an interesting and fun subject, but I expect the book is as full of facts as this article.
- wincy 5y agoIt’s easy to find “facts”, when I was 12 or so I got a book about the Bermuda Triangle and was thoroughly convinced that Atlantis was real and had advanced technology in ancient times.
- usrusr 5y agoOnly of you consider advertising a subspecies of navelgazing. Available in May 2022.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LiquidPolymer 5y agoI’ve long been fascinated by the wild man myths that emerge in most human cultures. Sasquatch is the most prominent example in the U.S. (a subject I devoured as an adolescent) Having travelled to many regions of the world, I’ve consistently inquired about such stories from local people. These myths are everywhere all around the world. They are typically large and dangerous, or small and mischievous (but also dangerous). Most of the people who I spoke to truly believed the described creatures were absolutely real. So the stories related in this article are variations on the same stories I’ve listened to around the globe. I won’t personally believe in such animals unless definitive proof is offered. But most people are quite animated around this subject which makes me wonder why such stories appear to be nearly universal.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- EdwardDiego 5y agoThe Māori, natives of NZ/Aotearoa, have legends of wild men, the Maero [0], who were displaced by the Māori, and accordingly angered. Their version of Ireland's Tuatha Dé Danann, I guess. It's always been fun to tease tourist hikers with stories of the Maero when you're in a remote backcountry hut hearing the godawful screams of brushtail possums. Speculation is that the myth derived from one or more of the "lost tribes" [1], Māori who fled into harsh wildernesses in the face of invaders. Given we've so little knowledge of archaic Māori culture following the extinction of the moa [2], maybe there were "lost tribes" back then that the Maero is based on. Amusingly, as a redhead under the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole, they have a myth of a white skinned and red haired people [3] who find direct sunlight lethal, which is pretty correct if you look at melanoma rates in NZ Europeans. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maero [1]: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov10_09Rail-t1-body-d16.html http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov10_09Rail-t1... [2]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/moa https://teara.govt.nz/en/moa [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patupaiarehe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patupaiarehe
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
- thamer 5y agoI wasn't familiar with the term hominin and though it might be a misspelling of hominid, but that's not the case: https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/hominid-and-hominin-whats-the-difference/ https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/homi... Hominid: the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes (that is, modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans plus all their immediate ancestors). Hominin: the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus).
- k_sze 5y agoSo hominins are a subset of hominids?
- puffoflogic 5y agoSee also canid vs canine, felid vs feline. The pattern also has caniform, feliform as a partition of extant carnivora; but no *homiform; alas, Wikipedia only gives simiiform, the higher primates. Canine = dog,wolf,jackal,fox. Canid = [only canines are extant]. Feline = housecat, wildcat (very broadly), lynx, cheetah, puma. Felid = felines, remaining big cats. Selected caniforms: canids, bears, earless seals. Selected feliforms: felids, hyenas(!), mongooses.
- kurupt213 5y agoFrom the title I was expecting a treatise on how the bonobo should be considered a hominin
- samanator 5y ago
- EdwardDiego 5y agoI want to believe.
- btilly 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis claims that the most recent fossils are about 50,000 years old. Without more recent bones, we have no reason to believe that they still exist. That said, myths about both small human-like animals and large ones are practically universal. We have another universal myth that was fairly recently dated to be much older than you'd expect. https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568 https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom... shows that the myth about the Pleiades, aka "seven sisters", likely date back 100,000 years. Given that, would it be surprising that myths like the Sasquatch date back to folk memories of Neandertals? Who our ancestors knew much more recently than that?
- KarlKemp 5y agoGrowing up 250m from where the Neandertals were found, I got to watch in real time as the common (or communicated) thinking on it evolved, from the image of the primitive brute to the model that, wearing a suit, wouldn't seem out of place sitting across the table from you at Starbucks. Assuming the later view to be closer to the truth, and also including the genetic evidence that quite a bit of mating happened between these branches, I believe the relationship would have been more familiar than the rare sightings of physically intimidating strangers that seem to form the core of the Sasquatch myth.
- btilly 5y agoGiven the evidence that Neandertals were not able to master things like sewing, and also lived an extremely active lifestyle (they were bigger, stronger, and had lots of broken bones that healed), the Sasquatch doesn't seem like that bad a fit. As for quite a bit of mating, current estimates say a maximum of dozens of times over a period of 12,000 years. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC532398/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC532398/ for verification. This is, "once every few hundred years someone got pregnant." This fits with rare enough encounters that interspecies sex only happened once every few generations.
- zelienople 5y agoOne aspect of basic biology that is almost invariably neglected when discussing the possibility of the continued existence of cryptids like Homo floresiensis is that there must be an isolated breeding population. Plate tectonics puts a limit on the size and depth of caves. So how do you hide a breeding population? The short answer: it is impossible.
- kochikame 5y agoLife, uh, finds a way
- mellosouls 5y agoAn article in Aeon discussing the proposed connection: https://aeon.co/ideas/investigating-homo-floresiensis-and-the-myth-of-the-ebu-gogo https://aeon.co/ideas/investigating-homo-floresiensis-and-th...
- jccalhoun 5y agoI don't know why I would think that their belief in human-like animals in the forest is any more credible than North Americans who think Bigfoot is real.
- mcphage 5y agoThe existence of (relatively) recent fossils is probably the largest reason.
- causality0 5y agoOk, so what's the dividing line between human and a related hominin? We and neanderthals could and did cross-breed. Sure we could find a living example of something we've already classified as a different species, but are we certain that if we found living members of a kind we've never seen a fossil of we wouldn't just call them human and move on?
- incompatible 5y agoWe'd have to decide whether "human" means the genus "Homo", as the name implies, or just Homo sapiens.
- fy20 5y agoThe specific name (second part) of a species is somewhat subjective, and is used to describe behaviour or properties a given species has that can be used to differentiate it from another related species. That mostly works ok, but in some parts of the animal kingdom there are some areas where it really doesn't. If you discovered fossils of both a poodle and a mastiff would you categorise them both as canis familiaris?
- kuhewa 5y agoNot just the name, but the whole biological species concept can break down at times. I mean look at the wholphin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholphin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholphin which is a fertile hybrid between parents of different genera but it doesn't make much sense to call false killer whales and bottlenose dolphins the same species.
- smohare 5y agoIt’s pretty clear what human means in these contexts.
- kuhewa 5y agoIs it? Because even the scientists who study and have named new hominids seem to disagree at times
- robinsoh 5y agoI find this claim hard to believe because of the location. Flores is not a huge wilderness. I've been there. I saw huge open fields of coconut, and rice plantations and population density is high. It is not some thick impenetrable jungle. The whole island (13,540 km2) is smaller than Connecticut (14,357 km2) and the population density in Flores is likely higher. It is narrow and bounded by the sea on both sides. There's been ample researchers, workers, tourists going all over the island. I imagine that had it been present, any cryptid there would have been documented scientifically by now.
- Stevvo 5y agoThe peaks South of Ruteng are covered with thick impenetrable jungle, one of the few patches of untouched primary rainforest left in Asia.
- justinator 5y ago> and the population density in Flores is likely higher. Not that it matters too much, but according to Wikipedia, the population density for Flores is half of CT.
- robinsoh 5y agoThanks for the correction. a) Flores The population was 2,039,373 in the 2020 Census 13,540 km² 2039363/13540= 150 humans per square km b) CT 3.565 million (2019) 14,357 km² 3565000/14357=248 humans per square km
- bayesian_horse 5y agoThe author says he spoke with at least 30 natives there who may have seen them. A very small population of secretive homininins would fit that bill.
- jamiek88 5y agoLikely not a breeding size population though.
- 5y ago
- sydthrowaway 5y agoI'd prefer to believe in Aliens.
- naikrovek 5y agoSeems like one could believe in both.
- fdgsdfogijq 5y agoThe big secret is that hominins like this mixed with what we consider modern humans and live on in some of our genes. Bring it up in public and be ready to lose your job.
- elil17 5y agoOkay that’s hyperbole if I’ve ever heard it. I think most people view, for example, Neanderthal genes in the human gene pool, as an interesting factoid, and nothing more.
- fdgsdfogijq 5y agoRight but Neanderthals are just the start. Stark contrasts between different human populations can be partly explained by hybrid mixing 50,000+ years ago
- bayesian_horse 5y agoThe Genomes of modern Humans only contain really small amounts of Genes from other Hominin species, for various reasons. Not enough to conclude those species survived in us.
- throw93232 5y agoThere are people alive today with Neandertal ancestry, so at least one other species is still alive.
- krrrh 5y agoYour comment made me curious about the actual extent of this. > However, the absence of Neanderthal-derived patrilineal Y-chromosome and matrilineal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in modern humans, along with the underrepresentation of Neanderthal X chromosome DNA, could imply reduced fertility or frequent sterility of some hybrid crosses, representing a partial biological reproductive barrier between the groups, and therefore species distinction. > The genomes of all non-sub-Saharan populations contain Neanderthal DNA. Various estimates exist for the proportion, such as 1–4% or 3.4–7.9% in modern Eurasians, or 1.8–2.4% in modern Europeans and 2.3–2.6% in modern East Asians. From Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
- dendodge 5y ago23andMe DNA tests claim to tell you what proportion Neanderthal you are. I, for example, have just under 2% Neanderthal DNA (allegedly), which they say is in the 47th percentile.
- kuhewa 5y agoFrom what I understand they test for some fraction, like 1/4 to 3/8 ish of total number of known Neanderthal SNPs. Dunno quite how representative that is of the total but I imagine probably a decent correlation. However, around 2013-14 they either changed the number of SNPs they considered Neanderthal origin or their algorithm changed, and I was PISSED because I went from 95th percentile to 47th-ish myself.
- throwaway48375 5y agoDenisovans too.
- mcherm 5y ago
- mostertoaster 5y agoI’m gonna say yes. There are tiny miniature human-like creatures still living in some crazy remote part of the world. It feels like it would be something out of a fantasy novel, so I like it.
- mostertoaster 5y agoTo them I hope we’re like Gulliver.
- ncmncm 5y agoGilligan.
- twofornone 5y ago>Labeled Homo floresiensis and dating to the late Pleistocene Australian Aborigines allegedly migrated to Australia in late Pleistocene time. Taken together with their unique genotype and physiology, why aren't they classified as a separate hominid subspecies?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y agoYou could ask this question about many human populations
- flir 5y agoBasically, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#/media/File:Homo_lineage_2017update.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#/media/File:... "Survived until the late Pleistocene" and "Have been separated since the late Pleistocene" are very different things.
- ilaksh 5y agoWhat's so unique about it?
- colechristensen 5y agoA lot of it probably comes down to politics and the terrible history of labeling groups of people as less than human. What is and is not a subspecies is already fairly vague and not necessarily of particularly high value (so you've labeled two individuals as different subspecies instead of the same species, so what?)
- bayesian_horse 5y agoWhat use is the term "subspecies" with Humans? No beneficial use has been established, so we don't use it, end of discussion.
- colechristensen 5y agoYes, it case it wasn't clear, this is exactly my point.
- celdon25 5y agoTo save some of you the reading, this is what the very end of the article says: > For reasons I discuss in the book, no field zoologist is yet looking for living specimens of H. floresiensis or related hominin species. But this does not mean that they cannot be found.
- suction 5y ago
- mhh__ 5y agoIt's a new species of chimp-anzee, you aren't current!
- codeflo 5y ago> In contrast, evolutionary theory puts humans (or hominins) last, just as does the biblical story of Genesis. Yet in all instances, the position confers on Homo sapiens a unique status, thereby separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Ha ha ha, no. That’s a wild misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, that humans are somehow “more evolved” than other current species. Modern apes are our siblings, not our ancestors. And nothing fundamental “separates” us from other animals: we’re yet another species, granted with some unique features that we ourselves consider very important.
- ramcle 5y agoI think this is supposed to mean that humans appeared relatively late in Earth's history ("two minutes to midnight"), instead of being there from the very beginning. Or to put it in a different way: much more species appeared before humans existed than after they already existed.
- pedro1976 5y agoWhat separates us afaik is - in bible terms - that we left the paradise, by becoming conscious.
- blenderdt 5y agoIn biblical terms this doesn't make sense to me because before they left the paradise Adam and Eve already had the task to step down to the animals and name them (step down as in: take care of them). What separates us, in biblical terms, is that humans were made after the image of God. If becomming conscious is what separates us, how do we know other creatures are unconscious?
- JonChesterfield 5y agoOctopus and dolphins seem likely to be conscious. Ravens too.
- thriftwy 5y ago
- he0001 5y agoHow much different must the dna be to be considered a new hominin?
- kurupt213 5y agoI thought this was an April fools article. His reasoning could apply to every drunk redneck that has seen the swamp ape in Florida
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- poulpy123 5y agoDifficult to believe a theory that takes legends at face value from someone who doesn't seem to understand evolution
- taylorius 5y agoI do wonder if visiting alien zoologists would classify all humans as the same species. I know we like to say we're all the same - but humans hailing from different parts of the world definitely have traits which are advantageous to those locations. Evolution never sleeps, after all.
- neaden 5y agoHumans actually have very little genetic diversity. Compared to Chimpanzees we are all closely related. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2012-03-02-chimps-show-much-greater-genetic-diversity-humans https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2012-03-02-chimps-show-much-greate... Or dogs which are all one species despite having much more variation than we do. We are still a pretty young species with long generations, so genetic diversity is low.
- rosmax_1337 5y agoThere is a prevalent pressure to say that "all humans are the same", and this article begins to dig at the roots of that pressure. The evolutionary history of Homo Sapiens is far more complex than: once there was ape, then there was man. But we don't want to recognize this complexity today because of the political heritage of the 20th century.
- ZanyProgrammer 5y agoSooner or later you end up at eugenics and racism, just with a more scientific, “just following the evidence” veneer.
- hnfong 5y agoPretending that everyone is really the same creates unnecessary social pressure for those who are naturally disadvantaged. Spreading falsehoods in order to avoid atrocities such as racism and eugenics is probably not the only way to move humanity forward.
- kossTKR 5y agoIs there really any radically isolated peoples stil on earth genetically? Any sources on this from non politcal authors? I know there was some interesting science being done by evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev about the aboriginals but as far as i remember the differences were still negligible - also he became good friends with the elders of these tribes and had great respect for them. Actual supremacist racists really are the scum of the earth, too bad if science is still hindered by people who want to use it as a political tool to further themselves or their in-group.
- kuhewa 5y ago30 eyewitness accounts, eh? Can't wait for the author's book on how the Thylacine (aka Tasmanian Tiger) is not only not extinct but facing overpopulation, after he interviews the 1000+ putative eyewitnesses from the past few decades.
- jrochkind1 5y agoFor their own sake, I hope "Western civilization" never finds them!
- billiam 5y agoJesus, despite his inartful way of expressing it, all he is saying is look around for more recent Florensis bones, and don't be surprised if you find they survived until relatively modern times. He is also implying that the oral/myth communication protocols of many societies will work across many millenia, as has been documented about indigenous people's stories about tsunamis, earthquakes, and meteorite impacts that happened many thousands of years ago. An island like Flores where modern hominids have lived continually for ~25-50K years or longer is a prime spot for those features to come together.
- uplifter 5y ago>We believe this movement of the stars can help to explain two puzzles: the similarity of Greek and Aboriginal stories about these stars, and the fact so many cultures call the cluster “seven sisters” even though we only see six stars today. They only use that as an explanation for one of those two puzzles, and then by taking that explanation as a given, they formulate a second hypothesis for the other puzzle. That is, they posit the change in appearance of the star cluster as an explanation for why they story/myth has a hidden/lost seventh sister, and then use the timeline of that explanation to posit that, if this first explanation is true, then the commonality of the myth might be due to it dating from a common origin from when the star cluster looked like it had seven stars. But the first hypothesis being true doesn't imply the second hypothesis is true, because there are alternative explanations; e.g. that similar myths about the same changing star cluster were developed independently by different cultures, perhaps due to some common trends in human thinking and cultural conventions(which may themselves inherit from some prehistoric time, even if the myth doesn't). Its an important distinction because claiming their observation about the stars explains two mysteries without recognizing this weak chaining of those explanations over-estimates the explanatory power of the hypothesis.